I grew up poor but now have $200,000 in the bank — here's why talking about money with friends is harder than ever before

This post was previously published on MEL, a new voice in men's lifestyle and culture
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This is the fifth installment of our seriesInto
the Black, where we hear from people who found ways
to pay off serious debt. This week we talked to Lorelei*, whose
economically precarious upbringing motivated her to get a college
degree and become a wealthy, successful working mother.

Lorelei, 35, Seattle

Past debt: About $80,000Source: Student loansPast job: Postdoctoral researcher at the
University of WashingtonPast salary: “I got paid sh--,” Lorelei says,
which equates to $40,000 a year in monetary terms.Current job: Hardware engineer at a medical
device companyCurrent salary: $105,000 plus a bonus of up to
$22,000 depending on personal and company performanceCurrent debt: None; Lorelei and her husband now
have a combined net worth of about $200,000.

I graduated from the University of Washington in December 2010
with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and $80,000 in student
loan debt.

I decided to take a little break after studying every minute of
every day. I was exhausted and needed to rediscover what once
made me excited about being an engineer. Mostly I just wanted to
sleep.

I was living off leftover student loan money which, I admit, was
stupid. Most of my debt was from the loans I took out as
undergrad, but I took out another loan my last year of grad
school as a buffer after my divorce.

After about nine months of that I took a job as a postdoc. I got
paid sh--: $40,000. This is pathetic considering how long
I’ve studied, I thought. But it wasn’t easy finding jobs in
my field since I had no on-the-job experience, and this offered
just that.

I was making just the minimum payments on my loans. I was anxious
about not paying down my debt, but it was just so daunting that I
couldn’t deal with it at the time. “We’ll get to that someday,” I
told myself.

I made sure to live cheaply. I always had roommates. During one
stretch, I was one of five roommates in a five-bedroom,
two-bathroom house. My rent was always around $500, $600, which
is hard to pull off in Seattle.

Eating out was a luxury, two to three times a week. Frozen pizza
was a good friend to me then.

Most of my hobbies are free, so I maintained an active social
life. I’d go dancing or meet up with my co-workers and make
furniture together.

Living cheaply was easy for me — I grew very poor in Tennessee.
My father was a self-employed construction worker and we never
had enough to stay up on rent. Sometimes the electricity got
turned off. When I was 8, we started renting out rooms in the
house just to get by. Everything we owned came from a thrift
shop. In my mind, only people in movies bought things from
stores.

And I knew I was poor. Kids made fun of me for wearing clothes
from the thrift store. Some of my friends laughed at me because I
could only afford the dollar movie theater (and not the regular
one). But that gave me the motivation to get a degree and not be
poor. That was always the point.

In May 2012, I moved in with my second husband and finally
started paying down my debt. My rent went down (obviously) but so
did my food costs. I don’t cook, but my husband does, and he made
all our food from scratch. Our monthly income was $4,169 and our
expenses were $3,163. The remaining $1,006 went to my student
loan debt.

The following year is when things changed significantly. I was
promoted to project manager and my salary doubled.

I lobbied hard for that raise. They intended to hire externally,
and because I helped create the budget, I knew what the job paid.
I got pushback when I asked for $80,000 and I pushed back myself.
I had read this book called Women Don’t Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding
Negotiation about the pitfalls of not negotiating your
first salary. If you lowball your first salary by 10, 20, 30
percent, that will follow you your entire career.

Thankfully, I avoided lifestyle inflation. I was so poor for so long
that I grew accustomed to that lifestyle. My budget rule was:
Don’t buy things. Much of the stuff my husband and I own is from
Goodwill, or a hand-me-down that’s 20 years old. But it’s
ours, and it has our spirit.

We started putting $4,000 a month toward my debt, and I made my
last debt payment on August 25, 2014. I thought I was gonna cry.
The weight was gone.

I was pregnant with my first child at the time and I remember
thinking what it would be like for him to be born into a family
with no debt and all this stability. That was really meaningful
for me, especially considering my upbringing.

Two months ago, I got a new job with another raise, this time to
$105,000 plus a bonus. I even negotiated flex time so I get to
see my son for dinner each night and pick up my work after he
goes to sleep. My husband and I are putting about $3,000 a month
toward a house fund — we’re looking to buy this fall. (My
husband is a software engineer, so he makes six figures, too.)

I feel like I’m winning at life.

Funny thing is, the more money you make, the harder it is to
actually discuss money openly. When my friends and I were all
poor, it was fine to vent about money because we were on even
footing. But things have gotten weird as I’ve changed
socioeconomic classes. I’m scared of coming off as the rich
a--hole, and people thinking my life is easy. She probably
just buys whatever she wants. Must be nice.

And it saddens me. I don’t want there to be a divide between me
and my friends. Strangely, talking about money is more socially
dangerous now than when I was poor.

Read the original article on MEL. This story is republished from MEL Magazine, a new men’s digital magazine that understands that there’s no playbook for how to be a guy. Sign up for their newsletter here. Copyright 2016. Follow MEL on Twitter.